


destination: alpha centauri (and your arms)

by silentsonata



Series: nice but inaccurate oneshots [17]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Fluff, M/M, Meta, Original Music, Pining, Post-Scene: The Bandstand (Good Omens), Scene: The Bandstand (Good Omens), Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:00:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22736845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentsonata/pseuds/silentsonata
Summary: Crowley learns to find his way home through the stars and is led to a place. Rather, an angel.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: nice but inaccurate oneshots [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1446124
Comments: 12
Kudos: 20





	destination: alpha centauri (and your arms)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [D20Owlbear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/D20Owlbear/gifts).



> Based on [Janthony's post](https://d20owlbear.tumblr.com/post/190707657933/go-prompt-adoption) and their generous offer to let me adopt their prompt.
> 
> I also wrote a song to accompany the fic, which you can find at the bottom and download for 4.24MB!

_Meet me at the third alternative rendezvous_ , he says. _The bandstand_.

When he thinks back on his words, their previous meetings well up like tears in his mind’s eye. They hadn’t meant to be rendezvouses at first. But things grow and change and, all of a sudden, Crowley had lost control of everything, even his heart, which he had held so close to himself, vowing never to be betrayed again.

Rome – _salutaria!_ – and the Globe (oh, the _world_ could’ve been theirs) and crêpes and churches and the lake and _you go too fast for me_ and _eternity_.

Through shifting crowds of people with long-forgotten faces, speaking words in long-dead tongues, there has always been one fixture, one star shining and guiding his way through the seas of time, dressed in white and adorned with the sweetest smile. A star that had come to him when he was lost and resigned to being who he was, not who he could be.

But the star follows a destined route. A Great Plan.

 _Great pustulent mangled bollocks to the Great blasted Plan,_ he screams.

It’s a Great Plan, alright. A plan that makes him feel like a pawn on a chessboard. A riddle that will go unsolved for eternity. A lock fashioned without a key to open it.

He can’t control the bitterness when Aziraphale tells him that he was an angel once, like he can be an angel again, like he _wants_ to be an angel again. Like Heaven can still be his home. _I won’t be forgiven. Not ever._ Crowley labels himself a demon like he has been taught to do and there is something terrible in the way Aziraphale’s face crumples. He tries not to look.

 _There isn’t anywhere to go_ , he hears, and he knows that there must be somewhere, some perfect answer. He – like an absolute fool, he tells himself – just can’t think of it. _It’s over._

 _Have a nice doomsday,_ he mocks, turns to leave, trying to remember how to swagger like the weight of the world hadn’t just settled on his shoulders.

Pages hover in the air like little windows through which the vast, terrifying universe can be seen. And they could go anywhere – _anywhere_ – but the infinite choices are not the most overwhelming aspect.

What he is overwhelmingly afraid of is asking Aziraphale to go with him. He is afraid of hearing _no_ , because to reject his stars, his Alpha Centauri, is to reject him. Art is intensely private, a reflection of one’s innermost thoughts, often betraying more than intended, certainly more than Crowley ever wants to be revealed.

And it’s not like he knows better than to question now. Why should he change if he was never wrong in the first place?

But they should go – they _must_ go. It’s a binary system, a home made for two celestial bodies orbiting each other. A home that he had made long ago, not knowing that he had made it for them. Part of him remains stubborn, unconvinced.

Crowley wrestles with it as it calls him a coward, telling him that he’s been running from the very moment he was created. Reminding him of how falling is still running, feet struggling to gain purchase on the unforgiving air, wings rendered immobile. Taunting him about how it’s all he’ll ever do.

He can’t fight back. He’s never had to be good with words (because someone else he knows is).

Crowley can’t dance on the silver linings of words, weaving in and out of loopholes, can’t make the space between the lines of text his own. He is an actor. The words he speaks never feel like his very own (except for when they are, except for when _he’s_ the one Crowley’s talking to). He thinks with his heart, not his head, not since thinking with his head ended up with him being hurled across the sky like a shooting star.

He can’t imagine why humans place wishes on shooting stars. Or stars, for that matter. They are symbols of death – the light they radiate is simply out of desperation to stay alive, to be remembered for one more second. But by that definition, they are also symbols of life, celebrations of how they lived and burned with all the world against them.

And like a sailor in an age gone by, Crowley looks to the sky for direction. They only tell him that he would make anything – a new him, a new life, a new world – to keep the angel safe. Because he can’t go back upstairs or downstairs or wherever in the world the stairs take him because there’ll be nothing to go back to, no-one to greet him when he goes back.

(Except…)

Crowley wants to run, to go back to the very start when stars were still flickering to life beneath his hands. He growls, wrenches the Bentley into the rightmost lane as she purrs like an apex predator, curses the fact that he only knows how to hit pause and not rewind. And for someone who has always lived in fast-forward, he thinks a lot about the coughing people he’s left in the dust.

The thing about life in the fast lane is that you run out of fuel faster. Crowley’s been running on empty for a few thousand years, rattling along the highway from hell, and he’s ignored every billboard and flashing sign telling him _stop, you can’t go on like this_ , because there is no rest for the wicked. Rather, the wicked do not deserve rest. He considers himself a sort of reverse Buddha who achieves nirvana not from stillness but from experiences which fill him until he is overflowing and trembling and his brain is bathing in a pool of adrenaline.

He thinks that if he runs fast enough, drives fast enough, gets far enough, that he will be able to leave his worries behind. But a demon’s demons adapt quickly, and Crowley has inadvertently trained them to become stronger and more adept. They will follow him to the end of the world and over the edge (but will they follow him on his way back – if there even is a way back?).

His foot presses down on the accelerator with more fervour than usual.

Oh, Crowley, a mayfly unaware of its immortality, desperately flitting from place to place to find a home that he can barely remember. It was brighter than anything he would ever see again and yet not bright enough to sear itself into his mind, not bright enough to stop itself becoming shadows of memories fallen to the depths of his mind like treasure chests to the sea floor after a shipwreck. It nudges at the back of his mind like a seed that won’t burst through the surface of the soil no matter how much he yells at himself.

It doesn’t help that, when he looks up at the sky at night, it feels like he is up amongst the stars again, the fabric of the universe draping around him but never touching him. Like he’s been placed in a glass box, close enough to see, not close enough to touch.

Then comes the question of whether the glass is there for him to look through or there for others to look in at him. An exhibit. A performer made to dance around like a monkey at the Her command.

Does the crowd laugh at him? With him? Do they cry with him? Will they even remember him?

There is something about forgetting that tosses cold water onto the fire that keeps Crowley burning. Perhaps it is to do with the fine line between losing things and having things taken away, because this is one of the few things he can control about his life. Perhaps it is because memories are all he has left of space, the silent world, a home from which he has been exiled.

 _It’s funny, isn’t it, how humans say that no-one can hear you scream in space?_ The stars hear. Even the void hears. God hears. It’s just a matter of whether She does anything about you.

But beneath nightfall, at the very least, he is surrounded by Her. How can he describe the feeling? It is the comfort and hopelessness of knowing that he is insignificant, one brick in the fortress of the universe. He’s a brick the architect can replace at any time, but one without which the building wouldn’t be _exactly_ the same.

But then there is the cornerstone, thing that keeps it all from collapsing, and Crowley knows that there are probably other things which keep the world together but in his heart of hearts, he knows that Aziraphale is his cornerstone. Because without good, there is no evil. Without faith, there is no questioning. Without angels, there are no demons.

Without one, how can there ever be two?

Crowley knows he can’t be Good. But at least he can feel Right. Like he belongs. They can be safe, just the two of them. Go where the shockwaves of the end of the world can’t reach them. Even if the world ends, _his_ world would just be beginning.

It is selfish, he knows. But Crowley knows he belongs at Aziraphale’s side. And he’s done so much for the world already, he thinks. Can’t he have just a little bit of it for himself?

He grinds his teeth and wills the Bentley to go faster because, now, there’s more to the remote control of life than just pause and fast-forward. This time, he’s not running away. He’s going to Aziraphale.

This time, he presses the home button.

**Author's Note:**

> so, songwriting, huh?
> 
> [Find me on Tumblr!](https://silent--sonata.tumblr.com/)   
>  [Chat to me on Discord!](https://discord.gg/pTcajxx)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] destination: alpha centauri (and your arms)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23122240) by [BabelGhoti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabelGhoti/pseuds/BabelGhoti)




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